California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
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California State University, Los Angeles

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California State University, Los Angeles

California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is part of the California State University system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degree programs, 122 master's degree programs, and 4 doctoral degrees: the Doctor of Philosophy in special education (in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles), Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, Doctor of Nursing Practice, and Doctor of Audiology. It also offers 22 teaching credentials.

Cal State LA had a student body of 22,740 as of Fall 2024, which includes 19,350 undergraduates, primarily from the Greater Los Angeles area, and 3,390 graduate students. It is organized into 9 colleges that house a total of 4 schools and approximately 50 academic departments, divisions, and interdisciplinary programs. The university's forensic science program is one of the oldest in the nation. The Early Entrance Program in the Honors College for gifted students as young as 12 is the only one of its kind in the United States in promoting a direct transitional scheme from middle and high school to college without intermediary remedial education. Cal State LA is a Hispanic-serving institution and is eligible to be designated as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander serving institution (AANAPISI).

The 175-acre (71 ha) hilltop campus core is home to the nation's first Charter College of Education, the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, the Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility, and the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

It is also home to two high schools: the Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School and the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), the only arts high school in Los Angeles that allows students from any district within Los Angeles County to attend.

The university is located on the site of one of California's 36 original adobes, built in 1776 by Franciscan missionaries and destroyed by fire in 1908. When the Spanish Franciscans founded the San Gabriel Mission in 1771, they dubbed the small river El Rio Rosa de Castillo. These lands once were part of a Mexican land grant known as Rancho Rosa Castilla. Juan Batista Batz, a Basque rancher from northern Spain and his wife, Catalina settled here in the 1852. Batz used the land for farming and intensive sheep ranching. The inspiration for the name of the ranch, according to local historians, was the abundant amount of native wild Wood roses (Rosa californica) that grew near the ranch home along the creek. The Tongva Indians named this area, Ochuunga (Place of Roses). The main drive through the campus is known as Paseo Rancho Castilla, in acknowledgment of the university's historic heritage.

Cal State LA was founded on July 2, 1947, by an act of the California legislature and opened for classes as Los Angeles State College on the campus of Los Angeles City College (LACC). LACC is a public community college in East Hollywood, Los Angeles located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard, the former campus of UCLA and originally a farm outside Los Angeles. As president of LACC, P. Victor Peterson became the acting president of the state college. Since the college had opened in September, 1947, with 136 students, it had grown in two years to over 2,000 students. Most were studying under the GI Bill, which had been largely responsible for establishment of the college. The first class of seven students graduated in 1948.

In 1949, when Howard S. McDonald became president of both Los Angeles State College and Los Angeles City College, the state college upper division classes were being taught in borrowed spaces on the City College campus by mostly part-time faculty. He hired administrators to help him formally organize the colleges. Then he found a site within Los Angeles to house the new "Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences," which replaced the Los Angeles State College also in 1949 after being reconstituted by the Legislature. McDonald enjoyed telling how some influential supporters of the University of Southern California opposed his selection of a piece of land in Baldwin Hills, and how then-Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson ran him out of Chavez Ravine so that he could lure the Dodgers baseball team to Los Angeles.

In 1952, the state proposed a new satellite campus for Cal State LA, at the time known as Los Angeles State College, and in July 1958, the campus separated from Cal State LA and was renamed San Fernando Valley State College (now known as California State University, Northridge). The first master's degrees were awarded in 1952.

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